houses!' What he wrote was as follows:--'I begin to complain of the men of quality who lay out so much for books, and give such prices that there is nothing to be had for poor scholars, whereof I have felt the effects; when I bid a fair price for an old book, I am answered, "The quality will give twice as much," and so I have done.' The Earls of Pembroke were for several generations the patrons of learning. 'Thomas, the eighth Earl, was contemporary with those illustrious characters, Sunderland, Harley, and Mead, during the Augustan age of Britain'; he added a large number of classics and early printed books to the library at Wilton, and his successor Earl Henry still further improved it by adding the best works on architecture, on biographies, and books of numismatics; 'the Earl of Pembroke is stored with antiquities relating to medals and lives.' Lord Somers had the rare pieces in law and English history which have been published in a well-known series of tracts. Lord Carbury loved mystical divinity; the Earl of Kent was all for pedigrees and visitations; the Earl of Kinnoul made large collections in mathematics and civil law; and Lord Coleraine followed Bishop Kennett in forming 'a library of lives.' Richard Smith was remembered as having started in the pursuit of Caxtons in the days of Charles II.; the taste was despised when Oldys wrote, but it eventually grew into a mania. 'For a person of an inferior rank we never had a collector more successful. No day passed over his head in which he did not visit Moorfields and Little Britain or St. Paul's Churchyard, and for many years together he suffered nothing to escape him that was rare and remarkable.' Mr. John Bridges of Lincoln's Inn was another 'notorious book-collector.' When his books were sold in 1726 the prices ran so high that the world suspected a conspiracy on the part of the executors. Humphrey Wanley was disappointed in his commissions, and called it a roguish sale; of the vendors he remarked 'their very looks, according to what I am told, dart out harping-irons.' Tom Hearne went to Mr. Bridges' chambers to see the sale, and descanted upon the fine condition of the lots: 'I was told of a gentleman of All Souls that gave a commission of eight shillings for an Homer, but it went for six guineas; people are in love with good binding rather than good reading.' Some of the entries in the catalogue are of great interest. The first edition of Homer, printed at Florence in 1488 on large paper, went for about a quarter of the price of an Aldine Livy. Lord Oxford secured a 'Lucian' in uncial characters, and a splendid Missal illuminated for Henry VII. There was a large-paper 'Politian' in two volumes, very carelessly described as 'finely bound by Grolier and his friends'; but the best of all was the MS. Horace, with an exquisite portrait of the poet, 'from the library of Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary.'